The World’s Largest Coalition of Nontheists and Nontheist Communities!

On the Death of Religion and the Reenlightenment

First, I will preface this article by admitting its total lack of academic citation. However, I welcome comments that can refute opinion stated as fact through the use of citation. Also, it should be noted that, for centuries, despite their amazing progress at technological advancement, Eastern civilizations such as the Chinese did not, for a very long time, appear to feel a need to change their civilization commensurate with their technical prowess in the same way we have in the West.

Nevertheless, after much study and thought on the matter of humanity evolving past a cultural reliance on religion over the application of reason, I have become convinced that ongoing history of the relevance of religion in Western civilization (and, eventually, world-wide) goes like this:

Pagan religions have real relevance in the oral traditions of tribal people living off the land. They provide a memorable kind of almanac that encodes useful collective wisdom about farming, the seasons, hunting, the weather, etc. Pretty much everyone has a hard scrabble life. Tribes that look after the orphans are the only ones that survive global cataclysms.
As villages grow into city states grow into empires; religion remains deeply ingrained but less and less relevant to most people's survival. It becomes a kind of superstitious sports team mentality. Economic classes begin to form and the leader class discovers that this ingrained but meaningless religion is useful to maintain and increase their inequitable power. So useful, in fact, that they are happy to buy into it themselves - as long as it serves to maintain and increase their privileges - especially if it conquers the Great Equalizer: death.
Monotheistic religions become a subversion of the religions of the privileged - offering an apocalyptic approach to the unfair, short and unsatisfying lot of the masses.
Rapidly, the privileged usurp the monotheistic paradigm because living for the afterlife makes the masses pliable to their fate in the unfair, earthly realm, since they will receive their rewards after they die. Thus, the masses once again abdicate the power in their numbers; convinced this life is a sham at best.
Evidence that things can get better for everyone with the advent of mass media (the printing press), etc. leads to the Enlightenment, and the French, American, and the Industrial Revolutions. Democracy evolves over time to include a middle-class who slowly become more and more apathetic about religion as their lives get better and longer here on Earth. In poorer nations, forced equality (see Communism) fails, since it is usurped in the same way as religion.
The Cold War and other potentially cataclysmic byproducts of the progress spurred by the Enlightenment scares the crap out of the less powerful and undereducated in the interim between the rule of the few and true meritocratic democracy. This fear is exploited by the privileged in a last gasp effort to cling to power.
Eventually, barring an indiscriminate global cataclysm (no guarantees there), the 'man behind the curtain' will be exposed. Reason and education will finally supplant religion and tradition, and the masses will finally realize that, managed properly, the Earth's resources are sufficient to sustain a population that can govern itself in a meritocratic democracy where basic needs are considered rights and effective ideas are looked to come from almost anyone.

Considering that our brain to body ratio has only been bigger than those of other primates for a mere 300,000 years or so, and 70,000 years ago there were only 2,000 of us - within that scale - I am reasonably hopeful this century could own the tipping point that future historians will mark as the Reenlightenment (or some other similar demarcation.)

Keep in mind, we only invented writing around 6,000 years ago. The printing press (in the West) is less than six hundred years old. The Constitution of the United States is under 250 years old. The U.N. is just over sixty. The internet went 'public' in the last twenty years or so. Mud hut villages in Africa now have cellphone coverage. Things are moving more forward than back.

Religion will not survive long in a world of people who are well-fed, housed, literate, etc. This century offers the first real opportunity for that to be a nearly global reality.

Perhaps this is overly simplistic and naively optimistic. Certainly, humanity has plenty of chances to blow it big time. But if you examine the overall, ongoing trends of the role of violence in our lives, our actual ability to produce food and shelter, etc. we have done astonishingly better than most think. Part of our sense, for example, that violence in the educated world is appallingly high has more to do with our relatively newly found propensity to be appalled by violence than the statistical reality re: the number of violent events in a person's life. And look at the fact that over 15% Americans will say they are not religious when surveyed. This is astounding and unprecedented. Roll in the apatheists, agnostics, 'spiritualists', and the genuinely pluralistic, and you begin to discover that - in societies where the standard of living and education is high, religion starts to die - even America.

Religion is more mortal than humanity in the end. One day we will drop it like a child of nine drops Santa. It is actually more satisfying to discover that generosity, love and compassion can originate with us rather than with a mythical being. It is actually more gratifying to face the future with curiosity and courage than with certainty and faith.

0 members like this

Comment

You need to be a member of Atheist Nexus to add comments!

Join Atheist Nexus

Comment by Howard S. Dunn on April 8, 2010 at 9:18am: the future is brown I gotta say - I like that metaphor.

Yeah - well, I'm with Felch - and probably closer to your position than it may appear. Bringing this full circle back to a context of non-belief ... I hold that courage is superior to faith. Both are ways to mitigate the downside of fear. Fear, obviously, is a mechanism that helps us react to danger. Our minds allow us to predict danger - partly using imagination to speculate on potential, as yet detected, risks. Because of the element of speculation, however, we can over estimate the danger - which can actually put us in greater danger, since we may panic, freeze up, etc.

There are two ways of operating in the face of fear: courage and faith.

Courage is a state of calm combined with clear awareness of the dangers at hand. This means that we must feel our fear yet, nevertheless, overcome its tendency to make us panic or act rashly.

Faith is a state of denial by which we allay our fear by readjusting our tendency to imagine the worst with a method of imagining supernatural protection. We pray, we convince ourselves that death is not the end, we tell ourselves that the next world will be better and free of fear, and we buy into ideas such as providence, martyrdom, guardian angels and whatnot to get us through.

Idealism is a kind of fool's faith. An atheist can have a fool's faith - a kind of blindness. This is why I often say Ignorance is BLIndneSS.

I hold to a kind of Cynical optimism that involves positive, proactive courage. I understand that there could be danger around any corner. I know you can't count on anything other than natural forces; not luck, god, or even the best laid plan. I completely understand that the odds are against me and that the house always wins. I am clear that I always know less than I don't about what is actually going on. Then I set my eyes on the most glorious goal I can, knowing I will never achieve it, and I put everything I have into getting there.

Here's the trick - set your eyes on the horizon. You will pass many milestones that were once beyond it. But your goal will always stay ahead of you; ever elusive. Nevertheless, you can't do any better than that. So might as well enjoy the ride.

Comment by Howard S. Dunn on April 7, 2010 at 5:42pm: First - you use a sly technique in characterizing my supportable analysis of the actual global decline of violence and rise of progress in the developed world and the world in general as 'wishful thinking.' You then cleverly characterize your conclusions as being 'rationally derived' and 'inevitable.' Interesting technique. However, it is not a true substitute for a critical counter argument.

I should remind you that less than fifty years ago it was considered 'righteous' in many Southern circles to burn busloads of Black and Jewish Americans. Now many are aghast (and, admittedly amused) when the same type of idiot carries a sign that says: "I'm teabagging for Jesus."

As for Malthus - such a 'collapse' may well be a predictable cyclical event - but it is not a foregone conclusion that will be apocalyptic in scale. When the plague took nearly half of Europe, one result was that a significant number of the surviving serfs became landowners - with the skills to work the land, while the former landowners who survived got the short end, since they had no viable skills and found themselves in no position to rule. This is part of what resulted in the proto-renaissance which led up to the enlightenment. Not the most upbeat path to the top of the mountain - but it appears that we keep climbing.

The one thing that resembles prayer that can actually work is proactive perseverance. It is a drumbeat I clearly love to dance to - but a huge number of animal species have been made extinct by a number of cataclysmic events that humanity has survived. Only 70,000 years ago we dwindled to a mere 2,000 and yet came back from that brink with stone tools, sex organs and an amazing thing called sentience.

Now, there are six billion of us. The earth is pretty well infested with a species that has learned how to survive the vacuum of space. I don't think it is an irrationally derived conclusion to bet that quite a number of us will be around for a very long time.

Comment by Howard S. Dunn on April 7, 2010 at 9:28am: @ Felch - then we agree. But part of that work is to point the way to a plausible - if uncertain - road to earthly progress. You will note that the worst Religions are apocalyptic and use the message of 'most of you are shit out of luck in this sinful world' to usurp a vision of an ever better world for coming generations with a lustful yen for everything to be over so 'the kingdom of god' can come. And mass apathy creates opportunities for the exploitive and a drag on the progressive.

@ Jared - the dangerous religions are overt conspiracies. In their case, the word 'theory' is accurately used in 'conspiracy theory.' Now, perhaps you could say that the Pope is actually oblivious to the damage the Church has done and is doing - but ignorance of your own maliciousness doesn't make you, de facto, beneficent. If the deliberate actions of a powerful organization are, by and large, detrimental to the progress and well-being of large numbers of people on earth - they are a conspiracy. I really don't care if the KKK thinks the burning cross symbolizes 'the light of the world.' The KKK is a heinous conspiracy.

Religions of pleasure? I can think of a few I'd be happy to be part of. Thinking good thoughts only hurts when it stops there.

Comment by Фелч Гроган on April 7, 2010 at 4:41am: Howard, I want to confuse you - big "C" Cynicism is remarkably optimistic, and as close as you can get to an antonym for "nihilism". It is our penchant for not shirking away from stark realities that gives us such a bad name. I have hope, but I am realistic enough to know it is premature to rejoice while we dance on organised religion's grave. It is but a small part of the totality of human idiocy. There is much more work to do.

Comment by Jared Lardo on April 7, 2010 at 3:30am: "Religion will not survive long in a world of people who are well-fed, housed, literate, etc. This century offers the first real opportunity for that to be a nearly global reality."

Religions of necessity will fade, but religions of pleasure will pop up the same: astrology, Oprah, Desperate Housewives, football. Bored people who feel nothing in their lives but the pressure of their own social, personal, and interpersonal failures--for example--will still tend to gravitate toward bogus like the "Law of Attraction". Basically when you've got a fully belly all the time so it's not satisfying anymore you feel like crap and wish there was magic--and you start to want it so bad that you start to think its real.

Point 2 sounds like you're stepping into a "religion is a conspiracy" accusation. I find it more plausible that the players involved were earnest and incorrect rather than that some of them designed to play mastermind and didn't manage to leave a clear statement of such to future generations to keep them from becoming believers.

Comment by Howard S. Dunn on April 7, 2010 at 2:33am: Love the quote. Here's one back at you: "Both optimists and pessimists contribute to our society. The optimist invents the airplane and the pessimist the parachute." ~Gil Stern

BTW - I know literally hundreds of 'crystal gazers' who, quixotically, remain intelligent, proactive and quite actively anti-teabagger. I suppose the the screaming voices of ignorant bigots explains how a black man is President of the US and two progressive women hold rank in the chain of succession.

I honestly respect a dash of realism in my existentialist tea. But I suggest you walk that line between Cynicism and a romantic yearning for apocalypse carefully. It is the fatalism of the brutalized serf that makes him hunger for an eternal kingdom of heaven.

Comment by Фелч Гроган on April 7, 2010 at 12:01am: Your optimism is endearing. However, humans are a species of straw clutchers addicted to nonsense of all flavours. The drop in numbers of the formally religious is more than made up for by cretins meditating with crystals and seeing astrologers and homeopaths. Celebrity cultism is a quasi-religious stupidity in it's own right - realistically, Oprah is more influential than the pope. There is nonsense and insanity wherever you look. I actually think as a species we are becoming stupider exponentially as technology advances. Moths and candles - that's what the digital age is doing, stupifying and hypnotising the already mindless. The fact that the Teabaggers exist is not a surprise in itself - the real surprise is that they are considered to be rational by so many. It shows that the window of historical memory has already shrunk to the blink of an eye. Palin is testament to that - every idiocy that falls out of her mouth is forgotten in seconds while the adoring faun on her as some kind of messiah. I would live to share your optimism. But I can't.

"A cynic is not merely one who reads bitter lessons from the past, he is one who is prematurely disappointed in the future." -- Sidney J. Harris

Comment by Howard S. Dunn on April 6, 2010 at 11:13pm: Haha - young. I lived through the worst part of the cold war. The idea that atheists in the South would ever get to 'come out' to a public forum of atheists in Australia when I was 'young' would have been an astounding fantasy.

The idea that when I was born - in the sixties - that Priests would be publicly accused across the world of being pedophiles - with proof to follow - would have been a ridiculous notion to harbor back then.

Phil - you could be right - and if everyone thought as you do - you will be. However, when I was 'young' the idea that we wouldn't blow ourselves up was held only in the minds of idealists.

Sometimes things look really bad for two reasons that offer hope:

1. They appear bad because our concept of bad has evolved. Global human on human violence has declined since the dawn of history. Life expectancy in the developed world has doubled in less than a century. More people have clean water in a secure shelter than ever before in the history of the world.

2. The 'bad guys' are crying out in their death throes. Ireland - at peace. Europe - at peace. Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Saudi Arabia - no overt warring with Israel. Japan and China - at peace. If you examine things in context - there has been wholesale progress going on for millennia.

Do you yearn for the 'good old days' of the Nazi Germany and Stalin? Maybe the idyllic Fifties with the Korean War, Iron curtain and constant threat of nuclear annihilation? There have never been as good, peaceful and bountiful time in the history of mankind. So why assume we have run out of runway?